“Creepy” stalker app maps user locations

I’m all for social networking. But I’ve always been opposed to apps that track my location, so more than once I’ve had Facebook friends ask me to change my privacy settings so they could “check me in” to various locations.

It just seems smart not to tell all of cyberspace where I’m at or what I’m doing. Plus, let’s face it: Nobody cares if I’m at Taco Bell or which of my university’s buildings I’m yawning my way through class in.

But with the advent of a new app suitably called “Creepy,” your location can become visible to potential stalkers even if you don’t constantly inform your friends of your every movement, Thinq reports. Explained simply, users of the software simply have to enter any person’s Twitter or Flickr username and click “Geolocate Target,” and it will scour every Tweet or photo ever posted for that user’s location at the time. The software will then produce a map of that user’s locations over a span of time, potentially revealing where a person lives or spends a lot of time.

The app was developed by Yiannis Kakavas, a graduate student who was concerned about the quickly disappearing concept of privacy online. Kakavas cited the increasing transparency found on social networking sites like FourSquare, which allows users to check in to local business, and Facebook, which recently developed a similar feature. Kakavas wanted to draw attention to how easy it is to stalk users based on their online posts.

The software gets this information from Twitter users who have not disabled the “geolocate” feature for their Tweets — and most Twitter users haven’t, Kakavas says. And since cell phones now have GPS trackers, pictures taken and posted from smart phones store locational information, which many users don’t realize.

Is this information troubling? It should be, Kakavas says. “Users should be educated and warned about the risks before they choose to use any location aware service,” he told Thinq. “It’s a constant fight between our right to be ‘left alone’ and our need for exhibitionism. Let’s see which one wins.”

If you still aren’t convinced, download it for free on Kakavas’ Web site and try it out.